Immortal Ascension Tower 16 THE MARTIAL WAYS OF XIAO

At first, she merely been surprised at Cheng Hao's claim that he would help her step into the inferior stage that same night. Later though she had also been completely and utterly shocked at the identity of that small golden tower but a few inches tall...

Cheng Hao had a Martial Way! This notion by far surpassed almost any other that she had come to learn that night.

After all, a Martial Way was something extremely, impossibly rare! It ws to the point that even comparing to Qilin horns and Phoenix feathers would be somewhat downgrading, because unlike the former two it was simply something that shouldn't exist at all in the mortal world! The reason for that was simple: they were as rare as it was difficult to make them.

A Mortal Realm cultivator creating a Martial Way was impossible by definition. Even the peak of the Mortal Realm, the Reverend stage cultivators had zero chances of creating one! That was because what a Martial Way required was for its creator to have reached the very peak of the Supreme stage. That was the peak of the Thirteenth Stage of cultivation, Second Stage of the Immortal Realm. Although Immortal Realm cultivators weren't too rare even within fallen Clans such as the present Xiao Clan, a Supreme Stage cultivator was extremely rare!

An expert at the peak of that stage would usually only be found amongst Heavenly Beasts, and the Divine Stage that came after it was almost as much of a legend as the Immortal Stage. That was just how rare of an existence were Immortal Realm cultivators as well as the powerhouses amongst said Realm, that were Peak Stage Supreme cultivators!

And let's not forget, even for such a mighty being it would require incredible effort and decades, centuries of meditation just to make one; years that could easily be spent in meditation for further enlightenment!

And yet, that child in front of her, a boy roughly her same age, had just achieved what was impossible! At the age of eight, without a single ounce of Spiritual Energy or Qi in his body, he had condensed a Martial Way all by himself!

And it was even such a mysterious and deep Martial Way, she had never seen anything like it before! To her knowledge, even the ancient Xiao Clan barely had a few dozen Martial Ways after hundreds of thousands of years of legacy.

As for that Immortal Ascension Tower, in aura alone, it was the likes of which not a single one of those mediocre Martial Ways of Xiao would ever be able to hold a candle to! And it was still incomplete? What kind of Martial Way was that! Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it a Martial Cheat?

Maybe... just maybe, there was one person in her entire clan who would be able to create such a marvel, but that person, her ancestor and world-renowned genius, was a monster that had been alive for centuries, and even fought alongside Xu Ling as an equal…

Xiao Lan!

The greatest weapon of the Xiao Clan: he was the only one that would possibly ever be able to accomplish the feat of creating a Martial Way!

But if they were so difficult to make, then why? Why would people still choose to create Martial Ways? The reason… was because it had so many uses one wouldn't be able to recite them all at once, because at least one more would always be discovered with time!

A Martial Way was essentially an item that could increase one's cultivation speed exponentially! If one had even the lowest grade of Martial Way, it would make his or her cultivation skyrocket almost overnight! One must know that, unless one has a Martial Way to aid breakthrough, another one of its wondrous uses, such breakthrough could easily take weeks if not months, years, even decades! After all, if it were that easy, a Supreme stage cultivator wouldn't be so rare at all, instead they would only barely rank at the middle-high tiers of the food chain!

But this new brother of hers had just said that tonight, they would actually break through... Together?

"Brother, you must be joking! Although it would probably be no problem for a genius like you, I have no chance to do that! Let alone a Martial Way, I haven't even have begun to sense my Qi yet! How could I even dream of breaking through?" Xiao Wu laughed bitterly.

The boy slowly opened his mouth and slowly, syllable-by-syllable, he spelled out: "Triple 'Little(Xiao)' Qi Scripture."

Boom! As soon as Xiao Wu heard those words she shuddered and her expression changed drastically.

Her eyes had grown cold and she had unconsciously released a storm of wild killing intent, slamming the table with her palm. Before she had noticed it, she had already put up her guard and had entered a strange stance: as soon as she had, the temperature of her surroundings had also begun to rapidly fall. The golden-eyed youth did not move nor did he show any trace of surprise at the sudden turn of the events.

After a few breaths, Xiao Wu dismissed the stance with a sigh and fell back on her seat. "Please, tell me… how is it that you know those words?" Xiao Wu was finally able to speak through clenched teeth.

In that moment, she was firmly refusing her instincts: as per training of the Xiao Clan's Young Mistress, those words alone would usually have been enough of a trigger to cut the throat of the other party. Ultimately however, it was clear she had still chosen to trust him and to not act. After all, he had helped and taught her so much that she had to, at the very least, trust him enough for him to explain himself.

She looked at the eyes of the child in front of her: occasional flashes of amusement would flash by, but they did not show a trace of fear at her thick killing intent.

After a while, the boy finally spoke with a knwoing smile. "Of course I know them! After all, that piece of parchment you Xiao hid so diligently within your sacred hall bears my signature as the Co-Creator alongside Xiao Lan!"

Xiao Wu was shocked as the killing intent immediately subsided: was that joke? It had to be! Her brain couldn't perceive it in any other way, so she started laughing, "Ahahah! You really shouldn't joke on these things, brother Hao! Although it is indeed a mystery how you know that Scripture, or about secrets of our Clan such as the Triple Qi!"

But I really was the one who wrote...

The boy sighed but then also chuckled bitterly.

Oh well, never mind… it simply means I'll have to find an even cooler moment to reveal it to her!

He looked at her for a while. Then, with a bitter smile and a loud sigh, he said, "Ah, my dear sister Wu… I thought I had told you that lies wouldn't bring you far in a relationship like ours?"

"Have yet to sense the Qi? That demonstration from earlier is more than enough for me to determine you HAVE! And not just any Qi! You sensed a Qi so rare and powerful it might almost rival the 'Golden Gates of Old', the Sensed Qi of the Evil Saint himself!" Cheng Hao raised his hand and moved his index and thumb close. "Almost" He winked.

Xiao Wu smiled powerlessly. Indeed, she HAD sensed something.

The Qi of the members of the Xiao Clan would usually fall into three major categories, and most would sense one and join a Hall that corresponded to a certain Qi. Some however, were special, like her father, and sensed two Qi at once! There was once a theory that this was possible because the Xiao Clan had a powerful bloodline that descended from ancient times, and that the Qi had once been only one and then split into three afterwards. It was speculated that, were a Triple Wielder of the three different attributes of the 'Xiao Qi' appear, that person would wield the true might of the Xiao Qi!

This notion however had been quickly dispelled when Xiao Lan first appeared and, despite having sensed all the three Qi at once, had been unable to cultivate even a single scripture from the Xiao Clan! Thus, his growth had been extremely slow... later on, him and the Evil Saint had thought this problem through and had created a Scripture especially for him, modifying those the Xiao Clan had created in their thousands of years of history and merging them together! First, he had bound together two. Then, he had repeated the process with the two that had been fused and the remaining one, making three scriptures into a single one: the Triple Xiao Qi Scripture!

After this, Xiao Lan's cultivation speed had skyrocketed, to the point he even stepped into the Immortal Realm at the age of fifty-nine. This had even surpassed the previous record held by Xu Ling himself by five years! However, this scripture was regarded as the greatest trump card of their clan: as long as they could produce a Triple Wielder, the recovery of the Xiao Clan was assured! For that however, they'd have to wait for the esteemed Xiao Lan to awaken from his deep slumber of a thousand years down in the Clan's Scared Grounds and hand over the scripture.

Just as she had thought up to here, Cheng Hao's words shook Xiao Wu awake, "Also, somebody has already aided you! I'm one hundred percent certain that it was that old fellow Lan, but it was probably done without you knowing. Calm down and breath as this might seem shocking"

Xiao Wu skeptically followed the instructions without asking for an explanation. Seeing that, Cheng Hao inwardly praised the trust she put in him. He smiled warmly and resumed. He said nine simple words. Those words shook Xiao Wu's mind and, as she understood their meaning, she unconsciously went and grabbed her head

He had said…

"You have a Martial Way concealed inside your consciousness!"

Those shocking words had come out so smoothly that it seemed as if Cheng Hao was just telling her that his favorite color was scarlet red.

"Brother Cheng... Is that true?" Xiao Wu's emerald eyes glowed and she was extremely shocked as well as excited. As if to answer her, Cheng Hao approached and touched her forehead. Once again, the invisible barrage slammed into him. Had somebody else thought of pressing on, that person would have most likely died. Unfortunately, Cheng Hao wasn't just 'somebody' and he easily pulled through once again!

In the girl's sea of consciousness, he once again gazed upon the scene that had bewildered him a while ago.

A gorgeous white tree as tall as the heavens stood proud and a black dragon thousands of feet long entwined around its branches. Up in a nonexistent sky, a purple moon shone down eerily...

The whole scene looked like something straight out of a fairy tale and it was just as scary and shocking as it was enticing and stunning. The scene was encased into what looked like a crystal ball, and it was so soul-crushingly powerful that had it been left free, it would have created enough pressure on what was located outside that Xiao Wu's mind could have as well shattered! Fortunately though, the glass sphere blocked that pressure, allowing Cheng Hao's consciousness to approach.

With the wave of the consciousness' hands, the glass ball and thus the scene as well shrank and fit into the small palm... With a smile, Cheng Hao removed the finger from Xiao Wu's forehead and, when he opened his palm, a glass ball was there.

"Shatter" He blew upon the crystalline surface and the glass ball indeed... Shattered! As soon as it did, the tree, the dragon and the moon appeared above his hand. The child let go and the whole thing began hovering in midair. Cheng Hao sat back on the chair and made a sign towards Xiao Wu to take the Martial Way in front of her. The boy's face was pale, while the girl's was so red from excitement that even an apple would be jealous.

She poked the tree with her finger and, sure enough, she felt a familiar pressure: the pressure of a Martial Way! It was extremely weak when compared to Cheng Hao's golden tower, but it was there anyway! Without thinking, Xiao Wu flew at Cheng Hao and embraced him as tightly as he could. Tears poured out like water during a flood as the girl spoke, "Thank you brother… Thank you!!! Just... Thank you for everything!"

Cheng Hao smiled weakly. "Hey, hey now… What happened to that fierce attitude of yours?"

Xiao Wu blushed but embraced him even tighter, "You really DO make it hard for people to care for you, don't you?"

Cheng Hao laughed.
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